How To Tame A Wild Tongue Chapter Summaries

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Language is more than just a means of communication; it is part of one's culture, self-expression, and identity. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is a chapter from the book ,Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza ,written by Gloria E. Anzaldua. In this chapter, she talks about her Chicana life during a period full of immigrant controversies where Latinos living in the United States were struggling to find their national identity and a language to speak freely without feeling any shame or fear She explains the dilemma she had to face during this time in which she was often criticized and scolded for her improper Spanish accent. From these experiences she labeled these attacks on languages as “Linguistic Terrorism”. Anzaldua expresses her feelings …show more content…

The conflict she addresses is the criticizing of one's accent and how that can shape an individual's identity and mentality. In this chapter, Anzaldua talks about her life during these controversies with her language where she was told that spoke the 'improper' and 'poor' Chicano Spanish throughout her childhood. She was constantly scolded and criticized by her mother as well as educator. Anzaldua had to control her tongue and she was not allowed to speak Spanish at her school or she would receive some form of punishment. She says that “All Chicano students were required to take two speech classes. Their purpose: to get rid of our accents” (Anzaldua, 2947). In almost every environment, she was mentally tortured by the dominant English language and culture into conforming to society's norms. Her native tongue was constantly belittled by those who speak the standard English and Spanish language. Anzaldua calls this "Linguistic Terrorism" because it is an attack on individual’s identity and their native language. This creates a sort of hierarchy in what is spoken because society sees these other dialects as illegitimate and …show more content…

In his book, Existentialism is a Humanist, he brings up the point about abandonment and he explains that it signifies that God does not exist and we should accept the significance of this non-existence. He also describes abandonment as the acknowledgement of the loneliness that people may feel when they realize there is no God to dictate a way of life and to guide them on how to live. He states that “if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behavior. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse” (Sartre, 8) Sartre claims that without God, the entire basis of morality is destroyed, including the values of secular morality since God played the role of creating our a priori ideas.We are simply abandoned in the sense of being alone in this universe and there is no guidance for people on how to live. In comparison to linguistic terrorism, both are very similar because if people were to abandon their native language and culture, they would feel lost and confused about their identity. Their native language is their god and by being forced to abandon what they believe in, you destroy a part of that individual's foundation and their

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